We recently introduced an Event Dome in SocioTown. One of the weekly events in the dome is Track & Field. Throughout the day, players can compete in a series of races. In every race, players will accumulate points based on their placement. Then the top 3 players at the end of the day receive a prize.

Sorry I haven’t updated the development blog in awhile. There’s actually been a TON of new additions to SocioTown over the past 4 months. However, I’ve been posting the info directly to our forums: http://www.outsidetheboxsoftware.com/forum/

Our forums have become very active over the past few months! Make sure to stop by there for the latest info and to converse with other SocioTown players.

That said, over the next week I’ll be posting about one of the significant features that was added in the past few months. Hopefully in a couple of weeks this blog will be up to speed!

Street Boxing is one of the gameplay modes we’ve been keeping under wraps. Here are a couple of teaser screen shots:

All you need to street box is a pair of boxing gloves, which you can get at the local shops in SocioTown. Street Boxing is real-time fighting. How well you do is dependent on your fight strategy as well as your player attributes such as Speed, Strength, and Endurance.

You can improve your player attributes by training, eating, and lifting weights.

The 8th has just about arrived and we are beginning the beta test finally! This is how it’s working:

Right now there’s already a small special forces group checking out the game on the production server. Once they give it the okay, we’ll be contacting about ~100 beta testers on Saturday night/Sunday. Assuming the game doesn’t blow up in flames, we’ll contact another ~250 beta testers on Monday. If all still goes well, we’ll contact an additional ~1000-1500 beta testers throughout the rest of the week.

So if you don’t receive an e-mail this weekend, wait until about the end of next week before you send me hate mail. We have received close to 4,000 beta test signup requests, which is fantastic considering we’ve done very limited marketing thus far. Out of that 4,000, we’ll probably contact half over the next week.

Also, if I find the time this weekend (which will be tough) I’ll post some screen shots of Street Boxing. Street Boxing is one of the gameplay features we’ve kept under wraps. Yes, it means there’s actual PvP play in SocioTown. Like I said I’ll try to get some screen shots and info posted this weekend.

Hope to see you in SocioTown!

- Chris Evans

3/17/08 UPDATE: We are about 5 days behind schedule, so if you haven’t received an e-mail yet don’t worry! We haven’t contacted the majority of people yet. Again, check your emails this week. Sorry to keep you all waiting! But we want to make sure all the major kinks are taken care of before you guys get your hands on it.

I’ve been getting quite a few e-mails, so I just wanted to post officially that we’re finally feature complete (meaning we’re not adding anymore new stuff) and that the beta testing will begin in 2 weeks on March 8th.

From those who signed up for the beta test, we’ll be choosing a select group. That group will then get SocioTown Invites which they can invite their friends or whomever. So if you haven’t signed up for the beta test now is the time to do so. Make sure to fill out all the sections correctly and any comments you provide will help a great deal as well.

Alright, it’s almost been two months since the last update and public testing is right around the corner! Those of you who have signed up for alpha/beta testing, you should expect to receive an e-mail in about two weeks. The testing should be begin roughly at the end of this month. Hopefully I’ll be able to provide a specific date fairly soon, but right now it’s looking like it’ll be the last week of October.

Next week, I’ll be releasing a new gameplay video that will show some of the social system in action.